Chapter 01

I stared at the empty room, watching the sunlight slowly pour in from the window. I could hear Mom knocking around in the kitchen as she got ready to leave for work. I don't remember when I had woken up. 

There were still army men scattered around, peeking out from under the desk and the coffee table. A guitar was resting on top of a pile of dirty laundry next to an armoire. I don't know when the last time I felt like playing it was. 

The tires of Mom's car crackled down the driveway and I turned my eyes up towards the clock. It was weird having classes start at ten.

Rolling over in my bed, my eyes next landed on a poster for a rock band that my friend Charlie had gotten me. I had put off listening to that band for all of high school. For all of our friendship. I had just kept telling him it was on my list of bands and songs to listen to, and that I would get around to it soon. I never did. And now he had moved away to Albuquerque. 

The poster had a line of skeletons dressed like cops in riot gear, standing in a line as the band members faced off against them. It was a pretty cool poster. I was a poser for having it and never listening to their music. 

I pulled myself out of bed and kicked a little toy robot out of my way, scattering army men. I had so many toys. I was scared to put them away though, because I hadn't touched them in months, and now that I was an adult, some part of me worried that if I picked them up, they'd disappear like a summer break. 

There were still one or two clean shirts in the drawer, I could do laundry tomorrow. The dominoes uniform definitely wasn't clean, but they'd only given me one, and it's not like I was gonna wear it all day. 

It took a few turns before the car kicked on. I tried not to think about what I was going to do when it finally kicked the bucket. Charlie, Kayla, and I had gone everywhere in this thing. I'd lost my virginity in the back seat, we'd driven up a river bed to Sandler's party in this car, alongside the jeeps and lifted trucks of the other kids with rich parents. People had cheered when they saw this old sedan pull up on the grass that day. Now, she could barely turn over.

It was a long drive to Keltzer Community College. I had a group project in physics, that had been a nightmare. I was the youngest in the group again, but none of us were within four years of each other. No one talked at all, it was actually a bit amusing. In a distant, miserable, kind of way. 

The sun was setting when I changed clothes in the car while parked outside of work. 

“Danny, you're late!” Barked Mortimer as I stepped in the back door. I didn't answer,  just dodged to the left as Marquel slipped out the door, a pizza bag in each hand. 

“Grab the next two,” Mortimer said, calling over the general din of the bustling kitchen. I nodded and checked out the orders on one of the wall computers. As I slid behind the ovens, and grabbed a spatula, I spotted Ellie working on the line. She turned an ice cold gaze towards me for a second, and I nodded to her. Her eyes narrowed on response and she went back to dealing pepperoni in a circular pattern on the pizza she was making.

I was sure all the kids from Landon College were like that. They looked down on us because we were workers, and they could all afford to take massive college loans, or were smart enough to get in on scholarships. I was everything they had been threatened with for most of their lives. Keep those GPAs up kids, or you'll be flipping burgers. Or slinging pizzas.

Whatever. Ellie might think she was better than us, but at the end of the day, she was working here too. 

My eyes had drifted down her back to her mini skirt, I realized. I quickly type my gaze from her, just in time to see one of the pizzas I had been waiting on fall off the edge of the conveyor belt and crash to the floor. There was a general groan from the whole store, and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. 

“Need a remake on a large meat lovers,” said Mortimer, peeking around the metal shelf where the finished orders went. 

“Keep your eyes on the prize, Danny,” he said waspishly.

“S-sorry…” I muttered. 

At one in the morning Mortimer flipped through my tips, typing them into the computer with a mechanical haze. 

“If you gotta thing for Ellie, you should try talking to her,” Mortimer mumbled, staring at the number the computer calculated for my taxes. 

“I don't like her, I was just spacing off,” I said, a bit harsher than I meant to, “besides, those college kids all look down on us, man.”

“Aren't you also on college?” Asked Mortimer, flipping through my money to take out the taxes. 

“That's Community College,” I said, “that's different.”

“‘Course it is,” snorted Mortimer, “go home and get yourself some shut eye, Danny.”

I pulled into one of the only three gas stations in town,  and was about halfway through filling up when I saw her.

Kayla was standing behind the cash register, staring idly at her phone. She looked so tired it might not have been on for all I could tell. He eyes definitely didn't look like she was teaching anything. 

I wanted to flee, but the gas was still pumping,  and the general heaviness that came with being awake so late slowed my movements pretty significantly. She Habra seen me yet, from what I could tell. That was a relief. 

I'm not proud of it, but I did crouch down behind the car so she wouldn't see me even if she looked. The breakup had been six months ago, so why did I still feel like this? It was the worst. 

When I got home, I tore off that stupid Dominoes uniform and chucked it on a pile with the guitar. It was finally starting to sink, and iv decided to run it with tomorrow's laundry. 

I flopped down in bed and sighed heavily. Tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.  No one ever told me it was going to be like this after high school. I don't know what I could've done if they had. 

I closed my eyes and wished, suddenly, to never wake up.

As far as I can tell, I never did.